Folk balladeer McEnery dead at 87 01/16/2002 Associated Press
SAN ANTONIO, TX Cowboy balladeer David "Red River Dave" McEnery, who penned "Shame is the Middle Name of Exxon" when he was stiffed by a service station, died Tuesday. He was 87.
McEnery, who wrote thousands of songs about current events and headlines, was hospitalized Monday with a kidney ailment. One of his most well-known ditties was written about Exxon after he received a bill for $258 from one of its service stations in San Antonio for repairs he said he didn't need on his van.
"They played it in New York City, and the (company) president heard it," McEnery said in a 1991 newspaper interview. "The next thing I knew, they took the $258 off my bill."
He also wrote songs about Watergate, the Falklands War and President Reagan.

His most famous, "Amelia Earhart's Last Flight," was written in 1937 after the famed aviatrix and her navigator disappeared over the Pacific.
The song was recorded by Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys. "Amelia Earhart is one of his best," Friedman told the San Antonio Express-News for its Wednesday editions. "I've performed it all over the world, and it's a crowd-pleaser. It soars."
McEnery began singing on local radio stations as a teen-ager in San Antonio. He was later hired by a radio station in Virginia as a singing , recorded for Decca, Savoy and other record labels.
McEnery served as an infantryman during World War II, before going to Hollywood, where he appeared in several westerns